The Cutting Ball Theater

The Cutting Ball Theater was founded in 1999 by theater artists Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers. After their training at the Yale School of Drama and Trinity Rep Conservatory respectively, Melrose and Rogers spent a year in Europe on a Fox Foundation Grant to observe master directors in France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. Upon returning to the United States, the couple debated about where to found a theater company with the goal of creating work of the same daring, rigor, arresting design and production values as the plays they had seen in Europe. They narrowed it down to New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Providence and ultimately chose San Francisco for its rich history of experimental art and commitment to the arts. Ironically in the same year as The Cutting Ball’s founding, Steve Winn wrote an article in the Chronicle titled “Experimental Theater Loses Its Edge,” which bemoaned the loss of companies like George Coates Performance Works, the Fifth Floor, and Antenna Theater, as well as the general lack of experimental work in a town that launched the careers of Sam Sheperd, Robert Woodruff, Karen Finley, and Joe Chaikin. The Cutting Ball arrived in San Francisco at just the right time to fill an important niche.

Since its first presentation in the San Francisco Fringe Festival, Cutting Ball’s output has grown steadily.It now presents a four-play season in residence at EXIT on Taylor conveniently located just two blocks from the Powell Street BART.In addition, Cutting Ball produces Avant GardARAMA!, which features several short, experimental works (by writers such as Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Eugenie Chan, Heiner Müller, and Gertrude Stein); an ongoing play-reading series of rarely produced classics called Hidden Classics and Risk is This . . . The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival. Ours is one of the only festivals in North America calling exclusively for experimental work. Risk is This . . . The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival features three selected plays which are workshopped for a week and then staged before an audience at the EXIT on Taylor.Risk . . . has developed plays that later received their world premiere at The Cutting Ball Theater such as Bone to Pick by Eugenie Chan and The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes as well as plays that were later fully produced by other theaters such as Trojan Barbie by Christine Evans (American Repertory Theater, Cambridge), The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes (The Flea Theater, New York) and Chain Reactions by Trevor Allen (C.A.F.E., San Francisco). Through Hidden Classics as well as its full productions, Cutting Ball has created a number of new translations of important classics such as Rob Melrose’s translations of Büchner’s Woyzeck, Sartre’s No Exit Jarry’s Ubu Roi, Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande and Paul Walsh’s translation of Strindberg’s Burned House. Cutting Ball’s radical re-imaginings of Shakespeare’s plays (such as The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It) have garnered both critical and audience acclaim.In the ten years since its founding, The Cutting Ball Theater has gained important recognition for its contributions to theater in the Bay Area and beyond, including a “Best of SF 2006″ from SF Weekly, “Best of the Bay 2007″ from San Francisco Magazine, and a SF Bay Guardian “2008 Goldie Award” for excellence in theater.